It's a shame that the store sucked and poisoned the well so to speak.
There is great potential here for MS to make an amazing product that integrates with exchange and does SO MANY NEAT THINGS. I want them to not screw this up but I think that ship has sailed.
My hope now is that as the Windows core improves and we see smaller x86 CPU's that eventually it'll just be a port of the core OS running on Intel chippery. Wintel all over again.

@scottalanmiller said:

Can it reboot successfully? No one knows!!!

I know how to find out

Cheers

I'm curious about the e-ink ones.
Can you surf the web (B&W obviously) on them?
Can you dump files to them & if so what format?
Is it a block device on USB (all easily accessable, drag and drop to add files or stupid custom software ala iTunes)?

I'd put in a cheap SSD before I went to an i3 but just my $0.02

It will surf the web and watch youtube / netflix no problem.

@scottalanmiller said:

That's a huge question that I don't know the answer to but I think that it is key to solving this problem. Maybe an IT Industry Association is needed to not be a union per se but to act as a non-profit to oversee this kind of stuff and set standards.

That's the first reasonable suggestion I've heard to attempt to fix this. Wonder what it would take to start one?

Time to go learn Python, I had no idea it was that wide spread. Working in SOHO / SME really does limit the horizons of tech I see. It's eye opening chatting with y'all in here.

It was mentioned earlier but I feel that job titles are to blame (at least in part)
Look on the job boards, in my area you will see crap like this:
Senior Network Administrator - duties: fixing computers and working on our software issues
Helpdesk Technician - duties: managing a domain across 5 sites with replication, encryption
Windows computer administrator - duties: manage our network switches, setup blah blah

How can we help fix this?

@Joyfano said:

Good morning to all..
Happy weekend

Good evening from PST-8! Signing out.

It's not very suprising that a near monopoly would decrease with any new competition but it does put a smile on my face. As a long time win-admin I do consider it a threat to my occupation and more fuel to the "learn linux" fire. I think a bit of good competition will make Microsoft products better which is a win for most everyone.

I've never used them personally* but xByte has a good rep in the community and what would appear to be excellent prices for used gear.
*Canada tax: the cost of additional shipping, border fees, import taxes, etc makes ordering hardware from the 'states just not worth the hassle.

To those with a moustache;

As I sit, sipping at my coffee, I pause to suck the remaining delicious drips out of my 'stache and stop. Because that's kind of gross.
How do y'all deal with that?

I like to keep mine trimmed up (I'll confess it's a bit long at the moment though) but this only reduces the issue. Soup strainer of yesterday is the coffee skimmer of today.

@scottalanmiller said:

I think the biggest question would be "is this a one time attack" or do you "attack passwords on a recurring basis." Funny, but it becomes a "business of hacking" question rather than one strictly of the technology involved.

Probably a good paper somewhere in there - economics of hacking? I'd read it.

@scottalanmiller said:

@RAM. said:

The reason 4 random words > 1 word in terms of a dictionary attack, or at best a hybrid attack, is based on the fact that 1 word, or 2 words may exist in a dictionary list, but 3 or 4 combined do not exist. A standard dictionary list reads from a list of predetermined potential passwords, everywhere from Mickey1 to Jones1, total crap. Combine the 2 words MickeyJones1 and you'd have to preform a brute-dictionary attack... which as far as I'm aware... doesn't exactly exist. Could it be written? Sure... but wouldn't that be clunky and really hog memory for no reason?

You're stuck with brute force which a 12 character pass would take quite a while.

I expect that it exists somewhere - people are always looking for ways of improving attacks, but even an elegant, hybrid dictionary attack is going to be insanely hard to execute. As the length gets longer, the overall complexity just skyrockets. This length also makes Rainbow Tables ineffective (with today's technology.)

Rainbow tables are awesome at getting a percentage of a large number of passwords, against a single one there is probably a break even point where the complexity of your tables outweighs just brute forcing it.
$0.02 go for length over complexity any day.

@scottalanmiller said:

I dislike SouthWest because of their boarding procedures. They are nice in flight but so stressful to deal with.

I know for a fact that you're tired today, I've posted in no less than three RAID5 posts on SW and you're no where to be seen!

@Minion-Queen said:

Wow I can't believe it. I have flow with them recently and had a terrible experience, which was my second terrible experience in a year.

Similar experience with Air Canada - avoid at all costs. WestJet has been excellent.

@scottalanmiller said:

Brushing up on my Python and trying to make the move from old Python to Python3.

I prefer "Holy Grail" but each to their own I suppose

@coliver said:

@MattSpeller said:

@Minion-Queen If no one told us about taking today off I am going to be super pissed! On the upside I have most of a bottle of 30yr old single malt, so if I'm sticking around I'm going to book dial-a-driver home

Maybe they thought IT needed to do some off-hours maintenance and decided to make the choice easy for you?

Edit: Also I'm generally fairly good with slang but I've never head of dial-a-driver before, is that like a cab?

Dial a driver: Two dudes show up, one follows you the other drives your car home with you in it. It's awesome.

@Minion-Queen If no one told us about taking today off I am going to be super pissed! On the upside I have most of a bottle of 30yr old single malt, so if I'm sticking around I'm going to book dial-a-driver home